A Culture Shock

             We know the world through a shared understanding of what is real and "natural". This socially constructed reality is a taken-for-granted reality. When we are confronted with a radically different reality, it can be a shocking experience. Sociologists use the term culture shock to refer to the way socially constructed reality can impact our mental and physical states.

             An anthropologist by the name of Napoleon Chagnon traveled 3 days up the Orinoco River in Venezuela in search of a tribe by the name of the Yanomamo. The Yanomamo in villages scattered along the border of Venezuela and Brazil. He arrives at 2 p.m. in the afternoon with hot, humid, face and hands swollen from insect bites. His heart pound. Chagnon exits the boat, pushes his way through underbrush and:.

             "I looked up and gasped when I saw a dozen burly, naked, sweaty, hideous men staring at us down the shafts of their drawn arrows! Immense wads of green tobacco were stuck between their lower teeth and lips making them look even more hideous, and strands of dark green slime dripped or hung from their nostrils--strands so long that they clung to their (chests) or drizzled down their chins.".

             "My next discovery was that there were a dozen or so vicious, underfed dogs snapping at my legs, circling me as if I were their next meal. I just stood there holding my notebook, helpless and pathetic. Then the stench of the decaying vegetation and filth hit me and I almost got sick. I was horrified. What kind of welcome was this for the person who had come to live with you and learn your way of life, to be friends with you?" (Chagnon: Yamamamo, 3ed., 1983:10).

             What Chagnon experienced here is an excellent example of culture shock. Luckily for Chagnon, the Yanomamo villagers recognized his guide and lowered their weapons. He was shaken by the fact that he could not make any sense of the people who surrounded him, hence, culture shock. .

             The Yanomamo, as Chagnon describes them, are thinly scattered over a vast and verdant Tropical Forest, living in small villages that are separated by many miles of unoccupied land.

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